Page 64 of Saved By Starlight
“This is your answer.” I embrace him, and my blade embraces his guts at the same time. His lips move silently, eyes wide, as I pull it out and clean my blade on his cloak. His death is so efficient, not a drop of blood mars my sveli.
“Lyro,” he wheezes, but I cut him off.
“Save your breath. You’ll need it. When your ghost greets the goddess, I think she will have much to say.”
Chapter 28
Lena
The days before the Hatching are long and tense. Harl has to guard the door of the hatchery to fend off a slew of Frathiks who want to check on their eggs and make sure I haven’t done anything to sabotage them.
“They’re just anxious fathers,” he says during one of my water breaks, after a particularly persistent pair pushed their way in and stood there belligerently at the edge of the dais with their zerduks, like I might flip a switch and destroy them all at any moment.
I just kept singing, a lump in my throat, while Harl summoned General Raknu to come order them away. He herded them out, but the look he gave me wasn’t friendly.
“I’m scared,” I confess, spilling water down the front of my sveli because I can’t stop my hands shaking.
“They won’t hurt you. Not while you’re song-bathing their offspring.”
“What about after?”
“Your Irran will come for you.” I hope he’s right. Like Lyro said, a lot stands between now and then. We sit in silence for a few minutes as I finish my water. Just as I’m about to get back to work, he says, “If he doesn’t return, consider me your backup plan. We’re good together. We’ve already proved it. If he hadn’t shown up...”
I sigh. Not this again. “I’ve only ever thought of you as a friend, Harl.”
“But you’ve done everything a mate would do for me,” he argues, hope in each of his eight shiny, dark eyes. “Nothing would have to change.”
“Everything has already changed. Even if Lyro—” I can’t bring myself to say it, so I don’t. “You and I can’t erase the past. I forgive you for what you did. But I can’t forget that you would have done worse if I hadn’t been so eager to help. You and I can’t be mates. I’m still not sure if we can even be friends.”
The look he gives me is so downtrodden, I almost want to give him hope again. But that would be cruel when I don’t think it’s possible. He’s a good person, kind and generous and loyal. He almost single-handedly figured out how to save his species. He’s a hero. But he wasn’t a good person to me. What we hadfeltlike friendship, but it wasn’t.
“You deserve to be someone’s first choice, Harl. It’s just not going to be me.”
After that conversation, he doesn’t try again. He watches my back, and I do my job, putting all my focus on singing and caring for the eggs. Sing, eat, sleep, repeat. And when the first baby pips, we all celebrate together. Even the Frathiks who have been the most guarded and suspicious thank me when they come to check for cracks in their own eggs.
General Raknu’s egg is in Rose’s room, but he stops by mine to congratulate me on the first pip.
“Our kind owes you a debt,” he says gruffly, dropping to a knee so our eyes are level. “I doubt we can repay it in kind, but we have a large team dedicated to the rescue of trafficked people across the galaxy. I hope that will heal some of the injury we have caused. If you wish to return to your star system, we will take you.”
“After the Hatching is complete, right?”
He has the decency to look embarrassed as he jerks a nod and pushes to his feet. “Our transport ships are reserved for ferrying young to their parents as they hatch. But a soon as one is available, I will reserve it for you.”
I shake my head. “It’s fine. I don’t want to leave. Everyone I love is in this star system, anyway. But if you could send that message I recorded to my sister, I’d appreciate it.”
“Consider it done.”
Transport ships begin arriving that afternoon, full of proud dads eager to hold their infants, and the first baby makes a full appearance. The Hatching songs are beautiful, joyous and loud. The kind of song I couldn’t have sung when I got here, but the weeks of exercising my voice have prepared me perfectly to belt them over the excited chatter of the crowds that gather to witness the Hatching.
Over the next ten hours, I sing my heart out as Frathik hands help the rest of the hatchlings emerge. They pick out the broken eggshells and feed the babies a special protein drink before tucking them back in their nests. All my glowy eggs are slowly replaced with curled little babies. They’re adorable, with pink, unwrinkled hides and tiny, wagging nubs left of their embryonic tails that will slowly resorb into their bodies over the coming weeks.
When Harl’s baby hatches, he’s there, and seeing him hold his little one in his arms for the first time after everything he’s done to have her? I lose it, blubbering through a few lines of the song. When it’s time for my break, he’s there, a silver pouch of water in one hand and his child cradled in his other arm.
“Which one do you want first?” he asks, grinning broadly as I reach for the little one. “Her name is Lele, after her song-mother,” he adds. I ignore the tribute, a little afraid it means he still wants more from me.
“A girl!” I say instead. This is a huge success for his Hatching program. Proof that on-planet Hatchings are the key to gender parity.
Harl nods happily. “Forty percent female so far!”
